Category: Flotsam and Jetsam

I have a few private blogs for different purposes. Kind of private journals. I noticed one today that I had forgotten about. I couldn’t remember why I created it. It had one entry. I quite liked what I’d written so I’m putting it here. I’m not sure why I wrote this in a private blog or what else I thought I’d do with this blog.

There are two truths. Both real. Seemingly at odds, yet here they exist within me. Despite whatever troubles my life may have, I am mostly at peace. Grateful for my many gifts, talents and blessings. Overall, my life is pretty damn great. Yet beneath it all, I feel the gargantuan darkness. Lurking in the depths like some legendary, mythic sea monster. I know it’s there. I feel its presence. The way it changes the pressure around me. Almost imperceptible and undetectable ripples from the deepest depths.

I have a genuine joy, happiness, and love of life, yet I often feel like a ghost walking through this world. An empty, hollow husk of a person, tired and weary of this life. Always tired. Wanting to sleep. Maybe not wake up. I compose suicide notes in my head, though I have no intention of any such thing.

I am genuinely fine on my own and can see a bright and wonderful life ahead, yet I can’t seem to shake the loss. I can’t stop the comparisons. The desire for what I’ve tasted but no longer have. I try to be present and non-resistant. I often succeed. And often fail. It’s like I’ve been ejected into an alternate dimension and it’s not a bad dimension, per se, but it’s not right. It’s off-kilter. I don’t belong here.

So I do the only thing I can do. I just keep swimming. I enjoy the sun on my skin and wind across my face. And I try to enjoy the water and make this new dimension my home despite the unsettling presence I can feel somewhere deep below me. And the undying desire deep within my very being for my real home. Where I belong. Or maybe that’s just resistance again and I should just call it my “previous” home.

Or perhaps it would be most accurate to simply say…”her.”

Okay people. I try to keep it pretty positive here, but I truly want to know: what do you do when you feel like you’ve lost faith in humanity as a whole?

I’m incredibly lucky in that my personal world or “Bubble” is filled with wonderful, amazing, beautiful people, but I can’t help but feel like my personal sampling is greatly skewed when event after event after event seems to definitively tell me that those amazing people are vastly outnumbered by vast sea of idiocy, or Idiosea, whose tides cannot be stemmed, sandbagged, leveed or otherwise contained. I’m seriously ready to be abducted by aliens.

I know that “impostor syndrome” is something that most people feel, no matter how successful, loved, etc. I definitely feel it, but interestingly I realized today that I feel it much more acutely as a musician than as an actor. I’m generally pretty comfortable and confident when doing acting or voiceover work (not that I don’t have my moments of insecurity), but with music, it’s different. Especially when dealing with other musicians I respect or admire. I get super nervous and in my head. I wondered what the difference was and I have a theory. I think it’s because acting is far less “quantifiable.” It’s far more amorphous and subjective and hard to measure.

Though music has those qualities as well to some degree, there is a technical aspect to it that can be measured and quantified. How well you play technically and how much knowledge you have. Can you play any scale known to man at inhuman speeds? Not that this is by any means the end all, be all, but just one example of something quantifiable. Did they hear you mess up that note in that solo? I know that it’s ridiculous. I’ve been a musician for over 30 years. It’s one of the ways I actually make a living. The quantity and breadth of my experience is dense and deep. And yet I so often feel like some kind of “amateur” when dealing with other people. Or more accurately, I believe that is what they will think of me. It lines up with one of my core insecurities which is that I don’t have low self esteem at all. I am quite proud and confident of who I am and the gifts I possess, and yet for some reason I always think that no one but me recognizes that. I never assume my own self image will extend to others’ image of me.

We humans are strange. I’m not sure of the point of this post other to let all you fake impostors out there know that you are not alone. Even Paul McCartney admitted to feeling this way until fairly recently. Many of the people you idolize have the exact same feeling, though to us that would seem ridiculous. Just know that the only impostor is the lying voice that tells you you are going to be found out as an impostor.

I feel something tickle my foot while I’m at my computer desk. I look down and it’s one of those giant “water bugs” that most people call “Cockroaches.” It runs further under my desk up against the wall.

I rush into the kitchen to find something to spray it with. All I can find is 409 All surface cleaner, but I figure that should do the trick. I come back and of course it’s no longer where it was. Crap. It could be anywhere. As luck would have it I quickly spot it near my desk. I start spraying it with 409. It runs under my desk again. I spray it all the way. It’s back against the wall and now amongst my tangle of carious cables back there. I grab a Whataburger drink lid to try and get it out to dispose of it. I swipe at it once…it gets jarred a bit but is still amongst the wires. I swipe at it again and it gets knocked…where? I don’t see it! Anywhere. I get a head lamp and my phone and start taking pictures and videos to try and locate it. It must have gone up under the portion of my desk where my computer sits which is only open from the back.

Shining the light I take a few photos and then several videos. It’s nowhere to be found. I search the wires. All around and under the desk. Nothing. Several times I give up because I’ve looked everywhere. But then I think “It can’t just disappear!” and search again. Nothing. Under the desk is totally clear. It’s like it just disappeared into thin air. I repeat this disbelief and thorough search several more times. Utterly baffled. There’s nowhere it could be. I put the 409 back in the kitchen. Sit down at my desk.

There’s a tickle on the other foot. The motherfucker is still alive and back from the intradimensional portal whence it vanished. Thinking quickly, I grab the empty Whataburger cup and place it in front of him. He seems at least slightly sluggish due to the 409 dousing earlier or possibly from traveling between dimensions or using whatever spells, powers or magical items that allowed it invisibility or planar travel.

It crawls in. I put the lid on. I take it to the bathroom where I flush this double-foot-violating fiend down the toilet. I am the ultimate victor. Were this another time and place, bards would write odes about me.

For the rest of the night, I imagine phantom paranoid tickles on my feet.

I first heard of Chris Cornell somewhere around 1990 when Ben Kent, the drummer for N The Rutz, the band I was in, was a HUGE Soundgarden fan. I have since and always will associate Soundgarden with Ben, who is still one of the best drummers I’ve ever played with. I understand the darkness and how life can just seem too hard to continue at times. I’m sorry the darkness won this battle with Chris.

Here’s my tribute to Chris Cornell. This was my favorite song of his, “Can’t Change Me.” I hope he will excuse the sloppiness as I just learned it today and this was the 2nd time I ever played and sang it but it’s about the tribute and not perfectionism (which is hard for me to let go of, even though I know that way lies madness).
#ChrisCornell #RIP

I’ve always skewed toward a vampiric schedule when left to my own devices. I find it interesting though in that it’s very dichotomous and sometimes I feel ambivalent about the late hours.

On the one hand, part of me feels alive and like there’s so much potential. Most of the world is asleep and it’s almost as if time is frozen in a way. A time to dream, whether you are awake or asleep. There’s not much actual “action” you can take, especially anything involving regular businesses or most people, but you can hope and dream and maybe work on some projects yourself.

But on the other hand, I feel tired and unproductive. Like a child I don’t want to go to sleep, yet part of me does. All potential is frozen in amber. It can feel lonely and foreboding. Sometimes even hostile or threatening. For the most part nothing can be done until tomorrow. No answers or progress will come.

It can feel like so many things all at once. A paradox. Yin-Yang. Will tonight be a friend? An enemy? A lover? An obstacle? Some mix of many elements? It was made for dreamers like me. Not all dreams are good. And without actions, dreams remain ephemeral, ethereal and amorphous. Like grasping at mist.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about divisiveness and how it has always been a major hot button pet peeve for me. I hate it with a fiery vengeance. This also applies to “snobbishness” which is really slightly different flavor but can also fall under this category. I heard a podcast recently (either Radiolab or Invibilia, both of which I highly recommend) where this woman was talking about being bullied as a child. They delved into this angle on how a lot of bullying isn’t even really about being mean or disliking the subject but about how it’s a bonding tactic for the bullies. I see this a lot throughout humanity. People who feel part of a community or bond together by pointing at those “others,” whoever that might be.

Naturally, I’ve seen this acutely leading up to this year’s presidential election. I’ve seen it my whole life in regards to music, movies and all art. “Oh, you like THAT band? HA! They suck! Your taste sucks!” It seems a very common thing these days for people to regard their opinions as facts. It came up in a friend’s post linking to a comedy video about how lame cargo shorts are and how women will find you unattractive if you wear them. I see it in the fact that 90% of my girlfriend’s social activities are “girl’s nights” or”girl’s weekends. Now it doesn’t at all bother me that she goes to these, it’s more that it so rampant and needs to be a thing. I’ve never in my life wanted to have a “dude’s night.” When I want to get together socially it includes all my friends, so it’s true that this is a thing I just don’t get or understand at all, having no parallel or equivalent urge myself.

I’ve seen it with the crazy, viral popularity of Pokemon GO. As fast as it became omnipresent across all demographics, it spawned sour haters and “I don’t play that stupid kid game crap.” I personally loved to see this phenomenon because it seemed the opposite of divisive to me. Suddenly I saw people of all ages, religions, genders, races, professions, etc., all getting out and having fun and sometimes talking to each other. Families. Friends, Groups of strangers in the same area. It made me happy in this world full of divisiveness. Until it also became a tool for others to be divisive and point and laugh and deride.

Deep down, I think we all just want to be loved and accepted. Some might deny that, even to themselves but I think it’s a basic human trait, and when we don’t feel loved or accepted, it hurts even if it’s something stupid like “I like cargo shorts” or “I play Pokemon GO” or “I love Styx,” all of which are true for me. Then something occurred to me today as I was walking. It wasn’t a new though, so I guess it re-occurred. While it always sucks in a way, you could view things like this as a natural filter in some instances. If that person you like doesn’t like what you wear, play, listen to, etc., then as much as it may feel bad in the moment, maybe it’s better to just let those natural filters work. That is, of course, a vast oversimplification, but a principal to think about any time that situation arises.

I mean it may suck if someone I work with on a project doesn’t like me or feels they don’t click with because of some subjective opinion or preference of mine, and in some situations maybe that doesn’t affect their professional opinion of me, but in others maybe it does. And if it does, then as much as it may suck to lose that gig or whatever, maybe it’s for the best.

I try my best to foster unity among all that I meet. I don’t always succeed. I am a passionate person and sometimes I can’t keep my damn mouth shut and contribute to divisiveness but I at least try to keep a vigilant eye on that and strive to perpetually improve. So I apologize for all the times in my life I’m sure I’ve bonded or laughed at some “other’s” expense. It’s not a good thing to do. I’d rather all of us laugh together and not to the detriment or anyone or anything else. It’s much more fun that way.